Century Europe Research Articles

The Lament of the Melons

Abstract Regimens advising on the management of the non-naturals constituted a significant proportion of the vernacular medical texts in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe. Scholars however are divided as to the extent to which such medical advice was familiar to the majority of the population. This article shows that cheap Italian 8vo song pamphlets, sung in the streets and sold by cantastorie and peddlers, provide evidence for the widespread circulation of preventive medical advice. Street singers were not deliberately transmitting medical knowledge but assumed it was already common knowledge, a shared discourse with which they could entertain their publics. The article concludes with a brief exploration of whether similar texts communicated medical ideas in France and England.

Položaj žene u francuskom Krivičnom zakoniku od 1810. godine

In this paper the author analyses the legal position of women in the French Penal Code of 1810 (Code pénal de 1810). Although the propositions of the Civil code of 1804 are key to determining the legal position of a woman in XIX century French law, we cannot disregard the propositions given by criminal law. By analysing legal sources as well as literature, both XIX century and current, the author gives an overview of the legal position of a woman as a victim, culprit and accomplice in the French Penal Code of 1810. This Code was written in a pronouncedly patriarchal tone, which is manifested in numerous legal propositions that seem outdated and very unjust from a contemporary perspective. Still, the Penal Code of 1810 echoed greatly in legal systems of XIX century Europe, which signifies that it corresponded to the spirit of the times.

The Inner-Ottoman Orientalist Dimitrie Cantemir (1673-1723)

Dimitrie Cantemir(1673-1723), a prolific man of letters, was an Orientalist raised in the Ottoman Empire during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. He was born in the Principality of Moldavia, a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire, and became a renowned historian, geographer, musician, theologian, politician, linguist, musicologist and diplomat, and one of the most intelligent figures in 18th century Europe. Interestingly, he has been evaluated differently in Moldavia, Romania, Turkey, and Russia, due to his major stages in life occurring in different countries such as his birth in Moldavia, education in Istanbul, and political asylum in Russia. As an Orientalist, he left several treaties of monumental significance that covered the spectrum of philosophy and history of both Orient and the West. His magnum opus was 『The History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire』, which was a marvelous treatise and is acknowledged as a primary historical source of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment that values intellectual quest of the Orient. Another masterpiece was 『The Book of the Science of Music according to the Alphabetic Notation』, which was a different treatise on Turkish classical music and the innovative system of musical notation. Because of this, Cantemir is highly regarded as a preeminent oriental scholar who conducted a first-hand study on the history and culture of the Ottoman Empire. More importantly, paying attention to the fact that Cantemir spent almost half a lifetime living and studying in Istanbul, this paper aims to explore answers to three questions; First, what was the historical and educational backdrop that made Cantemir an outstanding literary scholar and Orientalist of the time possible? Second, what was the broad outline and historical value of his greatest masterpiece on the Ottoman history? Third, what was the reason of Turkish people’s unfavorable emotions on Cantemir contrary to Europeans? Ultimately, this thesis concludes that Dimitrie Cantemir was one of the most prominent Orientalist scholars on history and culture of the Ottoman Empire and an active contributor to the Oriental Studies in Europe with the help of a high-quality education and learning in Istanbul.

Skeletal dysplasias in art and antiquities: A cultural journey through genes, environment, and chance.

People with skeletal dysplasias have left traces in art and antiquities through ages and cultures worldwide, in Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Europe. Such traces record the impact of people with skeletal dysplasia on society and culture-in daily life, religion, and mythology. However, identifying ("diagnosing") skeletal dysplasia in artifacts and interpreting what such depictions meant within the culture in which they were created is extremely challenging and at times impossible. The objectives of this short and necessarily selective survey are to present a few examples of art through different ages and cultures as a springboard for discussion not only on potential medical diagnoses but also on the lives of people with chondrodysplasia and how they were valued in the society in which they lived. The artifacts were selected from Ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Mesoamerica (Maya), Sub-Saharan Africa (Kingdom of Benin), Tang China, and 17th Century Europe. In some cases, surviving artifacts with likely depictions of skeletal dysplasia are few and their cultural context incompletely understood. Nevertheless, certain themes and attitudes seem to repeat across different times and regions, though some cultures, such as those in Ancient Egypt, appeared to have had a comparatively positive view of people with restricted growth and chondrodysplasia.

My First Atlas

Initially, when I was invited to write this essay, I thought about discussing the maps produced by XVI Century European navigators, which showed ‘Terra Brasilis,’ as Brazil was called during the pe...

Health Benefits of Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas L.)

Medicinal plants have been used for medical objectives since ancient times due to their beneficial properties, and their uses continue to this day. The Cornelian cherry fruit (Cornus mas L.) is considered to be one of those medicinal plants with important nutritional and therapeutic properties. It has been also used for different medical purposes in many countries in Europe and Asia for centuries due to its various important components in terms of health. Cornelian cherry is known to have antimicrobial, antioxidant, anticancer and anti-inflammatory effects due to its composition of phenolic compounds and ursolic acid. It is reported in the literature that This fruit is used in different countries for different purposes; for the treatment of intestinal and kidney diseases, strengthening immunity, and preventing some types of cancer and others. It is also used in traditional medicine to cure fever, cholera, kidney stones, malaria, urinary tract infections, heat stroke and bleeding. Many studies have reported the positive effect of Cornelian cherry in regulating blood sugar and preventing fat accumulation in the liver. Similar to many countries, it is grown in Turkey in many regions and it is consumed processed or fresh into several crops such as compote, jam, marmalade and fruit leather. This paper has reviewed the investigative studies of the health effect of cornelian cherry.

Foreword

Will the health crisis we have been experiencing since March 2020, with the Covid-19 epidemic that has spread worldwide, lead to a radical change in the way we produce the city? This is what a retrospective look at the health crises of 19th century Europe, which led to the invention of new architectural and urban models, invites us to consider. Born in the middle of the century, developed thanks to Louis Pasteur’s discovery in 1865 of the role of microorganisms in contamination and contagion,...

The complexity of employment and family life courses across 20th century Europe: More evidence for larger cross-national differences but little change across 1916‒1966 birth cohorts

Background: There has been much debate whether work and family lives became more complex in past decades, that is, exhibiting more frequent transitions and more uncertainty. Van Winkle and Fasang (2017) and Van Winkle (2018) first benchmarked change in employment and family complexity over time against cross-national differences in 14 European countries. Compared to sizeable and stable cross-national differences, the increase in employment and family complexity was small across cohorts. However, these studies could not include cohorts born past the late 1950s assumed to be most affected by the structural changes driving life course complexity and were limited to a relatively small set of West European countries. Objective: We replicate and extend these studies by adding over 15 additional countries in Eastern Europe and a decade of younger birth cohorts. Methods: The 3rd and 7th waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, sequence complexity metrics, and cross-classified modelling are used to simultaneously quantify the proportions of variance attributable to cohort and country differences in work and family lives between ages 18 to 50. Results: The updated findings still support a negligible increase in family complexity and a moderate increase in employment complexity that pale in comparison to large and stable cross-national differences for individuals born between 1916 and 1966 for work and family lives experienced from 1934 to 2016 in 30 European countries. Specifically, 15 and 10% of employment and family complexity is nested across countries, compared to 5.5 and 2% across birth cohorts. However, the analyses also indicate a polarization in Europe between most Eastern and Southern European countries with stable and low family complexity compared to Nordic and some Western European countries with high and increasing family complexity. In contrast, moderately increasing employment complexity is a Europe-wide trend. Conclusions: This study both replicates the original studies’ findings that cross-cohort change is minor compared to large cross-national differences, and is a substantive extension by addressing a large deficit of description on family and employment life course change in the Balkan and Baltic regions. Contribution: Cross-national comparisons are particularly promising for understanding the institutional drivers of employment and family instability.

Beyond the academic milieu: friendship in the shadow of death (studies)

ABSTRACT This introduction provides some insights on this special issue of Mortality, entitled Dying and Death in Former Communist European Countries, setting the issue against the general background of death studies and, more specifically, of death studies in eastern European countries. Some relevant references to the Dying and Death in 18th-21st Century Europe International Conference, organised in Romania, at the ‘1 Decembrie 1918ʹ University of Alba Iulia, Romania, between 2007 and 2019, are also made. The rationale and also the limitations of this special issue are brought into attention. The papers that form this issue are briefly presented.

Agrarianism as Modernity in 20th-Century Europe: The Golden Age of the Peasantry Alex Toshkov, Bloomsbury Academic, London, New York, Oxford, 2019, 256 pp., 9781350090576

Agrarianism as Modernity in 20^th-Century Europe: The Golden Age of the Peasantry Alex Toshkov, Bloomsbury Academic, London, New York, Oxford, 2019, 256 pp., 9781350090576

European Officers and the Mainland Irregular Forces on the Ionian Islands, 1798–1814: A Comparison of Command and Tactics

In the era of the Napoleonic wars, the Ionian Islands off the western coasts of Greece and southern Albania became a base of operations and an area of conflict in the Mediterranean in the years 1797–1814. In that period, Republican French, Russian, Imperial French, and British forces successively occupied these Greek-populated islands, formerly Venetian possessions. Each of these powers attempted to establish a nominally independent "Septinsular Republic" under their protectorate. There were efforts by all of these powers to organize native armed forces, some raised from among refugees from the mainland-bandits (klephtes), former Ottoman irregulars (armatoloi), and clansmen from the autonomous regions of Himara, Souli, and Mani. Although these refugee warriors were skilled in the use of weapons-flintlock firearms, sabres and yataghans-they fought and were organized according to traditions and methods that were different and considered "obsolete" in early nineteenth century Europe. This study will look into the organization, training and command of these troops by Russian, French, and British officers. It will study the successes and failures of these officers in forming these native warriors into regular or semi-regular forces. It will also examine how the attitudes and activities of these officers helped to develop the armed forces of the Greek War of Independence, 1821–1830. Keywords: Napoleonic wars, Ionian Islands, armatoloi and klephtes, military forces

Under State Protection Aeschylus’ the Suppliants and the Shift from Clan to State

Aeschylos’ tragedy The Suppliantsis in this article related to an opposition between clan and state—and more specifically with the development in ancient Greece from barbarism to civilization, from a lawless, uncultivated and disorganised world, to a clan-based social order and from there to a state-based organisation, which in many ways would set the pattern for the development in Europe for centuries to come.In the play, fifty sisters are fleeing from Egypt to Argos, persecuted by their fifty male cousins. The women seek protection and therefore refer to their shared origins with the population of Argos.The fact that Danaus has fifty daughters but no son, implies that if the daughters marry their cousins the legacy will stay within the clan. What the daughters’ uncle Aegyptus and his sons demand is that Danaus and his daughters should act in accordance with the regulatory framework of the clan system. This stipulates that in cases where fathers in patrilineal systems only have daughters, these daughters must marry endogamically (that is inwards) instead of exogamic ally (outwardly, and in the corresponding way for sons in matrilineal systems).The article shows how Argos, governed by King Pelasgus, is depicted in the play in contrast to the claustrophobic catatonia of incestuous relations, the latter illustrated by an imagery that stems from archaic Greek mythology. The claustrophobic feeling that links the family and kin in The Suppliants, through events such as incestuous marriages and family-related cannibalism, gives a picture of the individual’s room for manoeuvre being strictly regulated—in fact almost non-existent—in the extended family. It is such a claustrophobic world that the women in The Suppliants (like Orestes in Oresteia) are fleeing from.Instead they seek out a city state based on fundamentally different ideas than the family, kinship and clan-related organisation principles of the Egyptians. The Greek city state thereby appears to aim to liberate the archaic human from a claustrophobic captivity.

Nixing the nightshades: Traditional knowledge of intoxicating members of the Solanaceae among hallucinogenic plant and mushroom users in Slovenia.

Anticholinergic plants of the family Solanaceae have a long history of use as medicines, poisons, and recreational drugs. Though they were the intoxicating substances of choice throughout Europe for centuries, their use for these purposes has declined with the globalisation of other recreational drugs. The present study sought to examine the level of knowledge surrounding these plants among individuals who had used other hallucinogenic plants or mushrooms in Slovenia. Participants were questioned in regards to the anticholinergic Solanaceae that are known to grow wild in Slovenia: Atropa belladonna L., Datura stramonium L., Hyoscyamus niger L., and Scopolia carniolica L. As expected, only a small number of individuals had any substantial knowledge of these plants, and fewer still had used them; some were even unfamiliar with any of these plants. Knowledge of toxicity generally arose from family members, while books and the internet played prominent roles in regards to use knowledge. Knowledge of the plants was vastly varied, with many individuals confusing the plants for others, especially other members of the Solanaceae. Ultimately, a small group of individuals had the largest body of knowledge of these plants, though this was linked with university studies rather than traditional uses. Knowledge of the intoxicating Solanaceae has been largely lost in Slovenia among users of other botanical hallucinogens, likely due to the various dangers their use poses and the undesirable effects they often cause.

The Myth of U.N. Collective Security

It is widely assumed that the U.N. Security Council is a collective security mechanism. This Essay challenges this assumption. It claims that the U.N. Security Council was designed and continues to operate as a Great Power Concert, akin to the Concert of Europe of nineteenth century Europe. Moreover, this Essay argues that the principal purpose of the Security Council is not the enforcement of international law or the prevention of aggression. Rather, its primary aim was, and remains, the prevention of war between the Great Powers and providing an institutional forum for these states to cooperate and coordinate their policies. The Essay defines collective security and identifies is principal characteristics. Collective security is a mechanism that guarantees collective protection and assistance against aggression. This is because in a collective security mechanism, states agree to consider an attack against one as an attack against all. Nothing, however, in the U.N. Charter extends such a guarantee of collective protection against aggression to the U.N. Member States. Instead, as the negotiating history of the Charter demonstrates, the U.N. Security Council enjoys unfettered discretion regarding whether and how to intervene to prevent or repel acts of aggression or threats to or breaches of the peace. Moreover, because the Security Council was intended to function as a Great Power Concert, the five Permanent Members of the Security Council were granted an unrestricted right to veto any Security Council decision that they considered detrimental to their national interests. The institutional design of the Security Council reflects the belief of the founders of the United Nations that the surest guarantee of world order and international peace and security is the maintenance of the balance of power between the most powerful states in the international system. This Essay argues that this assumption underlying the structure of the Security Council remains valid and relevant today. As American unipolar moment passes and as the global balance of power shifts, preserving the balance of power and preventing a confrontation between the Great Powers are essential to international peace and security and to the effective functioning of international law.

Conceptual Framework for the Project Separation of Powers for 21st Century Europe (SepaRope)

The SepaRope project aims to provide an understanding of how the different branches of government, from different levels of governance, co-determine each other’s powers within the EU. The project takes inspiration from Christoph Mollers’ conceptualisation of separation of powers derived from individual and collective self-determination as the central element of the justification of public authority. We build on this and aim to identify how the interactions between different branches within the EU contribute to or hinder democratic will-formation, and manage or fail to control the exercise of public power.

Experimental study of historical processing of cobalt arsenide ore for colouring glazes (15-16th century Europe)

Cobalt was used since the early antiquity to tinge glass and glazes in blue. The presence of arsenic in blue decorated glazes since ~1500 onwards and absence beforehand, observed in Europe, might be related to the processing of the ore: roasting of the cobalt mineral (saffre) and obtaining a glass adding sand and potash (smalt) or as by-product of other metallurgical processes, e.g. silver smelting slag. We have replicated the roasting of cobalt arsenide ore (CoAs3) and the processing of silver smelting as described in historical treatises following the transformations by in situ variable temperature SR-XRD, PIXE and SEM. Our laboratory tests have proved that roasting cobalt arsenide ore either alone or mixed with fluxes (PbO, CaF2), CaCO3, SiO2 and kaolinite was unable to remove the arsenic completely. Roasting cobalt arsenide ore (saffre) alone explains the presence of arsenic in the cobalt blue glasses and glazes after 1520. The product obtained as described by Agricola contains less arsenic forming calcium arsenates, lead arsenates (Pb5(AsO4)3F, Pb8As2O13) and calcium lead arsenates (Ca,Pb)5(AsO4)3(F,Cl,OH) with an hedyphane structure, while cobalt is incorporated into a glassy matrix. As the physical separation of the arsenic free cobalt vitreous phase does not seem possible, these processes can explain the variable content of arsenic shown by the historical blue glazes but not the arsenic free glazes. In this case, the use of an arsenic free cobalt ore such as linnaeite is the most likely source.

Prefigurations of Intercultural Thinking: Explorations in Ancient Mediterranean and Chinese Sources

Abstract A very recent history of intercultural communication traces the field back to the formation of culture as a concept in mid-17th century Europe. Does this mean that interculturality came into being at that time? If it is indeed only a fairly recent development, it will not have strong roots in our collective civilizational history and might thus be easily overturned by countercurrents. We should therefore inquire whether earlier documentations of interculturality exist. This essay examines the earliest expressions of intercultural thought that are still accessible to us, while acknowledging that any so-called first traces are already marked by echoes and duplications. Hence the essay offers a synthesis which has not been attempted before. We find early expressions of interculturality in the Mediterranean region, a fertile contact zone connecting the European, African, and Asian continents, but equally in ancient China. The chief categories that are discernible from the records are foreign languages, countering ethnocentric bias, travel experience, and cosmopolitan thought. The evidence shows that historical discourses form irreducible interactional identities, and that these are effective in shaping the growth of major analytical perspectives which concern us at present. Accordingly, what might seem to be remote historical experience can gain a new role in our time’s emerging multicultural global order.

The Cannons of Newport. An Inquiry in the Worlds of the Counter-revolutionary International

In the end of 1873, the Carlists, who were leading a civil war against the Spanish liberal government since 1872, decided to acquire cannons in England and send them off to Spain. It was one of the main smuggling operations the counter-revolutionaries organized during that war. Aware of this clandestine manoeuvre, the ambassador managed to regain the cannons. Despite its finale failure, this vast smuggling operation reveals the modernity of the transnational structuration of counter-revolution in modern times. This article aims to use this case as an observatory of the counter-revolutionary international in the 19 th century. The Carlists and their supports were able to build a complex transnational political solidarity that connected together different places and spaces. The cannons of Newport were part of a huge circuit of arms and goods for the Carlists at a transnational scale. Such a transnational organization was made possible by the contacts and the circulations between counter-revolutionaries from all Europe. It supposed the participation of another world of actors: arms dealers, smugglers, ship-owners, sailors who put their skills at the service of the royalists. On the other side, the governments also had to work together in order to make the repression possible. This repression determined the dynamics of counter-revolutionary transnational politics, and supposed the development of secrecy skills. In the end, this case underlines how much this international solidarity relied on serious and well-prepared projects and on a real capacity of innovation of the counter-revolutionaries. The transnational solidarity in 1872-1876 was essential to the Spanish royalists as it provided to them money, weapons, men and supplies. The counter-revolutionaries were perfectly able to deal with this situation. This contrasts greatly with the traditional image of counter-revolution in 19 th century Europe. In spite of the finale failure for the Carlists, the case of the cannons of Newport offers therefore an incredible immersion in the multiple worlds of the counter-revolutionary internationalism.

The sociolinguistic profile of English in 21st century Europe

The sociolinguistic profile of English in 21st century Europe

The safety of the savior – an important goal in 21st century Europe

The safety of the savior – an important goal in 21st century Europe